golangci-lint

Install

Table of Contents

CI installation

Most installations of golangci-lint are performed for CI.

It's important to have reproducible CI: don't start to fail all builds at the same time. With golangci-lint this can happen if you use option linters.default: all and a new linter is added or even without linters.default: all when one upstream linter is upgraded.

IMPORTANT: It's highly recommended installing a specific version of golangci-lint available on the releases page.

GitHub Actions

We recommend using our GitHub Action for running golangci-lint in CI for GitHub projects.

It's fast and uses smart caching inside, and it can be much faster than the simple binary installation.

Log output of the action

Also, the action creates GitHub annotations for found issues (you don't need to dig into build log to see found by golangci-lint issues):

GitHub annotations of the action

GitLab CI

GitLab provides a guide for integrating golangci-lint into the Code Quality widget. A simple quickstart is their CI component, which can be used like this:

include:
  - component: $CI_SERVER_FQDN/components/code-quality-oss/codequality-os-scanners-integration/golangci@1.0.1

Note that you can only reference components in the same GitLab instance as your project

Other CI

Here is the other way to install golangci-lint:

# binary will be $(go env GOPATH)/bin/golangci-lint
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/HEAD/install.sh | sh -s -- -b $(go env GOPATH)/bin v2.0.1


# or install it into ./bin/
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/HEAD/install.sh | sh -s v2.0.1


# In Alpine Linux (as it does not come with curl by default)
wget -O- -nv https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/HEAD/install.sh | sh -s v2.0.1


golangci-lint --version

It is advised that you periodically update the version of golangci-lint as the project is under active development and is constantly being improved. For any problems with golangci-lint, check out recent GitHub issues and update if needed.

Local Installation

Packaging status

Binaries

# binary will be $(go env GOPATH)/bin/golangci-lint
curl -sSfL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/golangci/golangci-lint/HEAD/install.sh | sh -s -- -b $(go env GOPATH)/bin v2.0.1


golangci-lint --version

On Windows, you can run the above commands with Git Bash, which comes with Git for Windows.

Linux

Golangci-lint is available inside the majority of the package managers.

macOS

Homebrew

Note: Homebrew can use an unexpected version of Go to build the binary, so we recommend either using our binaries or ensuring the version of Go used to build.

You can install a binary release on macOS using brew:

brew install golangci-lint
brew upgrade golangci-lint

Note: Previously, we used a Homebrew tap. We recommend using the official formula instead of the tap, but sometimes the most recent release isn't immediately available via Homebrew core due to manual updates that need to occur from Homebrew core maintainers. In this case, the tap formula, which is updated automatically, can be used to install the latest version of golangci-lint:

brew tap golangci/tap
brew install golangci/tap/golangci-lint

MacPorts

It can also be installed through MacPorts The MacPorts installation mode is community driven, and not officially maintained by golangci team.

sudo port install golangci-lint

Windows

Chocolatey

You can install a binary on Windows using chocolatey.

choco install golangci-lint

Scoop

You can install a binary on Windows using scoop.

scoop install main/golangci-lint

The scoop package is not officially maintained by golangci team.

Docker

docker run --rm -v $(pwd):/app -w /app golangci/golangci-lint:v2.0.1 golangci-lint run

Colored output:

docker run -t --rm -v $(pwd):/app -w /app golangci/golangci-lint:v2.0.1 golangci-lint run

Preserving caches between consecutive runs:

docker run --rm -t -v $(pwd):/app -w /app \
--user $(id -u):$(id -g) \
-v $(go env GOCACHE):/.cache/go-build -e GOCACHE=/.cache/go-build \
-v $(go env GOMODCACHE):/.cache/mod -e GOMODCACHE=/.cache/mod \
-v ~/.cache/golangci-lint:/.cache/golangci-lint -e GOLANGCI_LINT_CACHE=/.cache/golangci-lint \
golangci/golangci-lint:v2.0.1 golangci-lint run

Install from Sources

Using go install/go get, "tools pattern", and tool command/directives installations aren't guaranteed to work.

We recommend using binary installation.

These installations aren't recommended because of the following points:

  1. These installations compile golangci-lint locally. The Go version used to build will depend on your local Go version.
  2. Some users use the -u flag for go get, which upgrades our dependencies. The resulting binary was not tested and is not guaranteed to work.
  3. When using the "tools pattern" or tool command/directives, the dependencies of a tool can modify the dependencies of another tool or your project. The resulting binary was not tested and is not guaranteed to work.
  4. We've encountered issues with Go module hashes due to the unexpected recreation of dependency tags.
  5. go.mod replacement directives don't apply transitively. It means a user will be using a patched version of golangci-lint if we use such replacements.
  6. It allows installation from the main branch, which can't be considered stable.
  7. It's slower than binary installation.
go install github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/v2/cmd/golangci-lint@v2.0.1
`go tool` usage recommendations

We don't recommend using go tool.

But if you want to use go tool to install and run golangci-lint (once again we don't recommend that), the best approach is to use a dedicated module or module file to isolate golangci-lint from other tools or dependencies.

This approach avoids modifying your project dependencies and the golangci-lint dependencies.

⚠️ IMPORTANT ⚠️: You should never update golangci-lint dependencies manually.

Method 1: dedicated module file

# Create a dedicated module file
go mod init -modfile=golangci-lint.mod <your_module_path>/golangci-lint
# Example: go mod init -modfile=golangci-lint.mod github.com/org/repo/golangci-lint
# Add golangci-lint as a tool
go get -tool -modfile=golangci-lint.mod github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/v2/cmd/golangci-lint@v2.0.1
# Run golangci-lint as a tool
go tool -modfile=golangci-lint.mod golangci-lint run
# Update golangci-lint
go get -tool -modfile=golangci-lint.mod github.com/golangci/v2/golangci-lint/cmd/golangci-lint@latest

Method 2: dedicated module

# Create a dedicated directory
mkdir golangci-lint
# Create a dedicated module file
go mod init -modfile=tools/go.mod <your_module_path>/golangci-lint
# Example: go mod init -modfile=golangci-lint/go.mod github.com/org/repo/golangci-lint
# Setup a Go workspace
go work init . golangci-lint
# Add golangci-lint as a tool
go get -tool -modfile=golangci-lint/go.mod github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/v2/cmd/golangci-lint
# Run golangci-lint as a tool
go tool golangci-lint run
# Update golangci-lint
go get -tool -modfile=golangci-lint/go.mod github.com/golangci/golangci-lint/v2/cmd/golangci-lint@latest

Next

Quick Start: how to use golangci-lint.

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